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Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

economist.com

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Re: Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

#161

Post by inglor_cz »

pydry wrote: post #62
s_dev wrote: post #4

This is something many people in the EU simply don't get -- I don't get it. Germans have a basically a positive stereotype of being a scientific nation and all around clever lads -- this has enormous soft power and gives leverage to things like "Made in Germany" as a brand. This anti-nuclear stance in Germany is absolutely caustic to that projected image. It's absolutely insane they want to shut down Nuclear and repl…

I don't get the positivity surrounding nuclear power and the claim that antipathy is akin to antivax idiocy. * It's eye wateringly expensive both to build and to decommission. Solar, wind and batteries are cheaper. Hornsea 2 produces the same power as a nuclear plant at half the price and with surprisingly low intermittency. * Even if it were the same price, nuclear takes decades to build rather than years. * Despite…

Some of the nuclear plants that Germany is shutting down are Instead, Germany chose the path of decommissioning, which, as you mention, is expensive - and produces no electricity. This was a purely ideological move.

Re: Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

#162

Post by locallost »

fsflover wrote: post #156
locallost wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's relevant because people are assuming otherwise and are stunned that someone would do such a thing that in reality exists only in their imagination. See current top comment: It's absolutely insane they want to shut down Nuclear and replace it with fossil fueled plants False. Simply false.

To me it's equivalent. The removed nuclear energy is replaced with coal. It doesn't matter even if overall it's decreasing. It could decrease much more . Actually, it's not even decreasing: https://www.dw.com/en/coal-and-fossil-fuel-share-of-german-e...

No, coal as a percentage of their electricity production went down from 45% to 25% in 10 years. They removed nuclear and coal and replaced both with renewables (coal is the bottom two). Data: https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/sites/default/files/styles/80...

Re: Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

#163

Post by hagbard_c »

ivan_gammel wrote: post #140
hagbard_c wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Extracting Uranium from sea water might solve the fuel problem but it does not deal with the waste problem. Breeder reactors can deal with both by reworking spent fuel into new fuel and a bit of waste. The resulting waste has a far smaller volume and shorter half-life which means it needs to be stored for hundreds, not thousands of years. Combining the two - Uranium from the sea plus breeder reactors to rework spent…

The costs for keeping waste for hundreds of years are currently not accounted for in the nuclear energy prices. In fact, they are not even properly estimated because we cannot make economic forecasts for centuries. So any decision that involves storing waste for hundreds of years is basically offloading the consequences of dealing with it to future generations. Obviously this is not a responsible way to handle such m…

Where are those costs not accounted for? Where I live they are, and then some - nuclear energy was taxed extra [1] to pay for waste storage and handling as well as to pay for alternative energy sources. This tax was added at the end of the 90's and rescinded in 2019. By that time waste storage and handling had been paid off several times over.

[1] https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%A4rnkraftsskatt

Re: Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

#164

Post by marvinblum »

IAmEveryone wrote: post #111
marvinblum wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm German and I don't know what we're doing. Prices are insane right now. New electricity contracts cost 45 cents per kilowatt-hour. Heating my home (82 sqm) with electricity costs about 400 euros a month right now alone. This will obviously get better in spring, but I don't know how citizens with lower incomes handle it.

Heating a home with electricity is simply immoral. It's all the emissions of burning coal, multiplied by 3 due to generator and transmission losses. Besides, energy prices saw a steep rise in all of Europe, so it doesn't make much sense to blame the end of nuclear energy for it. Also, just a single reactor has shut down so far, 11 days ago. A single plant shutting down isn't enough to influence prices to such a degre…

> Heating a home with electricity is simply immoral.

Well, I built it last year, so I didn't know how much energy it would consume. Also, I'm still up to adding a photovoltaics plant on my roof and energy sources should be mostly green on windy and/or sunny days in Germany.

> Besides, energy prices saw a steep rise in all of Europe, so it doesn't make much sense to blame the end of nuclear energy for it.

I didn't blame nuclear specifically for it, but the German electricity politics are insane and far off from reality. Shutting down _any_ energy plant is a bad idea, considering how close we got to a blackout last year.

Re: Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

#165

Post by fsflover »

IAmEveryone wrote: post #111
marvinblum wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm German and I don't know what we're doing. Prices are insane right now. New electricity contracts cost 45 cents per kilowatt-hour. Heating my home (82 sqm) with electricity costs about 400 euros a month right now alone. This will obviously get better in spring, but I don't know how citizens with lower incomes handle it.

Heating a home with electricity is simply immoral. It's all the emissions of burning coal, multiplied by 3 due to generator and transmission losses. Besides, energy prices saw a steep rise in all of Europe, so it doesn't make much sense to blame the end of nuclear energy for it. Also, just a single reactor has shut down so far, 11 days ago. A single plant shutting down isn't enough to influence prices to such a degre…

> Heating a home with electricity is simply immoral.

Not if it uses a green energy source, e.g., nuclear.

Re: Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

#166

Post by croes »

selfhoster11 wrote: post #46
croes wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same was thought about japanese nuclear power plants

Except they built them in a place that's pretty known for earthquakes. An earthquake in Germany sounds like science fiction.

Yes, and the built it to withstand and earthquake or a tsunami, unfortunately not both.

Because heavy earthquakes in Germany are unlikely the standards for german nuclear power plants aren't planned to withstand one because the planning is accordingly to the dangers of the location.

And that is the problem. We are building something that has to last decades if not centuries and if we miss something the damage is severe.

For example before satellite imagery ships were built according to the normal distribution of waves which said large waves are rare, freak waves nearly impossible. Stories about freak waves were even often dismissed as exaggeration or sailor's yarn. Nowadays we know freak waves happen a lot more often as we thought and ships are built accordingly but older ships have problems if a freak wave shows up or they simply sink.

Re: Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

#167

Post by fsflover »

ivan_gammel wrote: post #158
fsflover wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power#/media/File:Deat...

I’m well aware of the statistics, but your link is irrelevant to my comment. It is simply insensitive to picturing Chernobyl as something beneficial for the environment.

You are trying to show something very unlikely as having a serious danger. Statistics is very relevant here.

Re: Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

#168

Post by inglor_cz »

pydry wrote: post #157
tjansen wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Solar, wind and batteries are cheaper and money is limited. How can you even estimate the cost of batteries? Insane amounts of batteries would be needed, capable of storing all of Germany's energy needs (including transportation and residential heating) for 10 days or so. That would be at least 10 TWh, as Germany currently uses about 550 TWh per year. The global production of lithium ion batteries in 2018 was 290 G…

>We find that low-wind-power events are less frequent in winter than in summer, but the maximum duration is distributed more evenly between months. While short events are frequent, very long events are much rarer. Every year, a period of around five consecutive days with an average wind capacity factor below 10% occurs, and every ten years a respective period of nearly eight days. These durations decrease if only win…

"I'd be happy if we used a bit of gas."

Gas alone does not produce electricity. Gas power stations do. This means building enough gas power stations to cover power requirements of the entire country, then having them sitting most of the time idle there, "just in case".

This is the core of the problem: wind and solar need to be massively backed up. You cannot rely on them supplying even 5 per cent of their nominal capacity if the weather turns against you.

Such a massive backup is eye-wateringly expensive, too. And it consumes concrete and steel, two elements whose production is carbon-intensive.

Re: Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

#169

Post by fsflover »

locallost wrote: post #162
fsflover wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me it's equivalent. The removed nuclear energy is replaced with coal. It doesn't matter even if overall it's decreasing. It could decrease much more . Actually, it's not even decreasing: https://www.dw.com/en/coal-and-fossil-fuel-share-of-german-e...

No, coal as a percentage of their electricity production went down from 45% to 25% in 10 years. They removed nuclear and coal and replaced both with renewables (coal is the bottom two). Data: https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/sites/default/files/styles/80...

> coal as a percentage of their electricity production went down from 45% to 25% in 10 years.

Couldn't it go to 5% by using nuclear?

Re: Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

#170

Post by Arnt »

akvadrako wrote: post #143
Arnt wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the relevant insurance... well, not companies. A company that acts for insurance agencies and others, doing actuary computations and such. Anyway, one of those was contracted to compute new insurance costs for nuclear power plants in Germany. If the state no longer limits their liability, but instead applies the same rules to nuclear power plants as it does to other industry, then the average German plants wou…

€2⁹, so 512 euro a year? I assume you meant some large number and that's probably because you are assuming they need to cover all kinds of exaggerated costs like lawsuits from people who get cancer or keeping radiation levels below the background level in case of a leak.

Another, separate response. A digression, really.

Some people appear to tick all three of these:

- My viewpoint is a scientific one

- The liability rules for chemical plants is fine

- The same rules would be too strict for nuclear plants

IMO anyone can combine any pair of those, but considering all three to be true is… very puzzling to me.

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